South Beach Cartel

by Nisa Santiago

  Apple didn’t like her sister’s tone, but it was expected under the circumstances.

  “I’m out, Kola. And congrats on the baby. I’m really happy for you, sis.”

  Before leaving, Apple stopped to check in on Peaches and couldn’t resist shooting a nasty look at Kamel on her way out the front door.

  2

  Citi leaned closer to the glass coffee table, scooped the white powder out of the little baggy, and cut it into lines with a credit card. She placed the thin, short straw into her right nostril and snorted a line of coke that was hardly stepped on. The hit was exhilarating—like an abrupt orgasm. She quickly did another line and felt that extreme high attacking her nerve endings. She pinched her nostrils, closed her eyes, and sank into the plush seating as she allowed the potent cocaine to take effect on her. The coke felt like it was hitting the back of her throat, and then she got that drip. Her buzz lasted for about fifteen minutes. She was ready to do a third line.

  Citi was in her three-bedroom condo in Astoria, Queens. She had become a recreational user of cocaine but was always a firm believer in the saying, you never get high off your own supply. But today, she needed the pick-me-up to get her mind off of her problems, even if the relief was temporary. One of their stash houses had gotten raided by the local police department. It was a significant blow to their operation.

  Apparently, the raid on their stash house happened on a humble. A detective was fucking some young bitch on the block, and one night he’d noticed Wise, one of Citi’s soldiers, exiting the stash house down the block with a gun tucked in his waistband and then leaning into a vehicle to retrieve a few small boxes. Instead of arresting Wise on the spot for weapon possession, the detective decided to observe the house. For weeks he sat parked outside the location and snapped incriminating pictures of the operation and took down license plate numbers. All this surveillance led to him being granted a search warrant for the place.

  In the early morning, with a tactical unit poised on the block, the detective and several officers kicked in the front and back doors and swarmed the place. They made several arrests and seized money and drugs. The early morning raid was all over the evening news.

  All that shit Citi could live with. It was part of the game—police raids, losses, and arrests. But what Citi felt like she couldn’t live without was her side dick—the nigga who had her infatuated. Pacho was a sneak fuck, and he was going to be arraigned today.

  From her seat, she heard the shower running and then stopping. Soon afterward, Scar walked into the room from taking a shower and saw Citi zoned out and high, sitting in the plush hunter green chair wearing nothing but a black thong. He eyed the cocaine on the table and shifted his eyes toward Citi, who still had her eyes closed.

  “You stressin’ for nuthin’, yo,” he uttered. “All them dudes know to keep their fuckin’ mouths shut. We know where their family lives and you know I won’t hesitate to start droppin’ bodies should anyone start snitchin’.”

  Slowly, Citi opened her eyes to look at him. Scar stood in front of her with a white towel wrapped around his waist. His cold black eyes were set on her deadpan. He was a scary lookin’ dude with heavy gang tattoos and war wounds covering about sixty percent of his body. He had gashes, knife injuries, burns, and bullet wounds across his flesh. It wasn’t a pretty sight. He had a Fetty Wap looking eye, wore a low Mohawk, and was bow-legged with huge hands. His dick was average, but it wasn’t why Citi was with Scar. She fucked him for protection. And one thing Scar was good at was protecting her. His fierce reputation on the streets preceded him, and she needed him around.

  When Citi had stolen the money from Cartier and Apple, she needed a thorough dude by her side until she was able to locate her brother. She’d met Scar in a Brooklyn nightclub, where he was surrounded by his dangerous goons. Scar immediately took a liking to Citi, with her pretty eyes, long hair, and flawless skin. Scar was a stone-cold killer, and because of that, she fucked him.

  Scar didn’t have a ferocious sexual appetite like most men his age. Making money was his bitch. Hustling was what turned Scar on. He could fuck with it every day. In fact, they rarely had sex, and when they did, Scar was on some freak shit. Early on, he introduced a dildo into their sex life. The kicker was, it wasn’t for her. Scar loved a thick dildo shoved deeply into his asshole. Citi didn’t mind. To each his own, she thought. But when he wanted to ram both his dick and the dildo into her booty hole, she quickly shut him down and let him know that she wasn’t down for that type of party.

  Citi sat in silence and allowed the cocaine to stimulate her entire body. She kept her eyes closed because she was thinking about Pacho and his big dick and how she was going to ride it as soon as they let him out on bail. Then Scar had to come into the room and ruin it for her.

  He dropped his towel and started to lotion his tattooed and worn-torn body right there in front of her. Citi remained silent. Scar was quick-tempered, and it was something that truly irked her.

  “Yo, get ya ass up!” he roughly said. “We got fuckin’ moves to make. I gotta go meet up wit’ this nigga Cane and make the exchange wit’ those Bronx niggas. We down a lot of fuckin’ paper and product from that bust and some connects got spooked and want to lay low until this shit blows over. Between bail and lawyers”—he whistled—“this gonna fuckin’ cost me like two hundred large.”

  He went to put on his boxers and repeated to Citi, “Yo, get ya ass up! I need you to take them stacks to this list of lawyers and the bail bondsmen.”

  Citi stared at him. She would be remiss if she didn’t state the obvious. “You mean it’s gonna cost us—and when I say us, I mean it’s costing me—two-hundred large. Let’s not forget who built this shit!”

  Citi rolled her eyes, stood up, and tried to walk past Scar to get into the shower herself. But Scar had other plans. He wasn’t having any of her slick mouth. His violent backhand came like lightning striking, and it smashed across Citi’s face and sent her crashing to the floor. He stood over her and snarled. “You don’t ever fuckin’ learn, do you!”

  She gazed up at Scar and suddenly burst into tears. She jumped up and ran into the bathroom to lock herself inside. Scar gave quick chase, but he was too late. He banged his fist on the door and yelled at her, “Look at what you fuckin’ made me do! You gonna fuckin’ learn today, though!”

  Citi kept herself locked in the bathroom for over an hour. Scar was crazy and she’d never seen anything like him before. He was almost demonic.

  She finally heard silence on the other side of the door and assumed he was gone. She slowly opened the bathroom door and discovered she was right. Scar had left the apartment.

  “Good fuckin’ riddance,” she said to herself.

  She hurriedly got dressed and grabbed her Prada duffel bag with her money inside and left the apartment to get her real boo out of jail.

  3

  Cartier pulled the blinds open to let some sunlight into the bedroom. The problem was that there wasn’t any sunlight. It was gray and rainy out—a depressed looking day—and it had been that way for almost a week now. It was early morning and the weather in Seattle, Washington was a mild 65 degrees on a gloomy September day.

  Cartier sighed at the weather and shook her head. “Fuckin’ suicidal,” she uttered to herself.

  She stretched and yawned by the window. She needed to prepare herself for another work day. For a moment, she stared out the window and observed a few of her neighbors making their way to work in the light rain. Where she stayed was quiet, nice, and peaceful—and a bit expensive too. The makeup of Seattle was completely different from the east coast and from other cities. It was a city surrounded by water, mountains, and evergreen forests, and it contained thousands of acres of parkland, making it a great place for outdoor activities like hiking, kayaking, camping, fishing, and skiing. The culture had a little bit of everything, but the city was proud of its blue collar roots, and
lots of folks worked hard to keep those intact. The people were mostly aloof where Cartier stayed. They weren’t unfriendly, but most folks just kept to themselves.

  Cartier glanced at the clock on the dresser. It was 7:05. Her job at Starbucks was a downer, but at the moment, it somewhat helped with the bills. She worked as a barista and she was barely making ends meet. It was a stark contrast to her old life in New York, California, and Miami. Some days, Cartier would look at herself in the mirror and not recognize the woman she’d become—a bitch with a regular-ass job who was living with a roommate she occasionally had sex with. She shared the apartment with a man named Edward for her convenience.

  Edward worked as a software developer at a tech startup. The two had met at a local lounge a few months back. Cartier was there with a few of her coworkers, enjoying the scenery and music. She and her coworkers were dancing seductively on the floor and she caught Edward’s attention. He wasn’t her type and vice-versa. In fact, Edward couldn’t even play in her league. But Cartier was a bitch who always saw an opportunity in everyone—and sizing Edward up, she knew he was someone she could take advantage of. He had a good job and, most importantly, his own place.

  The two talked and Cartier openly flirted with him. After striking out with every white girl in the place, Edward felt he had hit a homerun with Cartier. That night, he brought her back to his place. It was a one-bedroom apartment with rent costing him $3000 a month, and that was without utilities. It was a quaint place, just less than 700 square feet with a small terrace that overlooked the iconic Space Needle. Edward had a thing for cleanliness and order. Everything had to be in its place. He didn’t like clutter, and his place was an indication of that.

  She fucked him that night—and fucked him good. Cartier put her pussy down on Edward so good he looked like a drug addict who couldn’t get enough. He wanted perpetual repeats. For Cartier, having sex with Edward was business—but the dude was open. After sex, he was the one who initiated the pillow talk, but Cartier refused to tell him anything about herself. When he asked about her accent, she simply told him that she was from the east coast—New York City.

  “I never met a girl from New York City before,” he’d said.

  He couldn’t handle Cartier, and she knew what type of fool he was. Cartier was exotic and intriguing to him—something different than his typical. The fool was down with the white girls, the blonde-haired and blue-eyed Beckys of Seattle. She and Edward would never be a couple. Cartier was too hood to introduce to his friends, and she didn’t have any friends of her own, only coworkers she occasionally hung out with.

  After a week of throwing down with Edward in his bedroom, sucking his thin dick and giving him some of the best pussy he’d ever had, she mentioned her job at Starbucks and her long commute each morning.

  He was listening.

  It took her nearly two hours to get to work in the morning from where she lived on the outskirts of the city, where the rent was cheaper. Edward came up with a viable solution.

  “I could use a roommate,” he’d said, “so why not move in with me?”

  It was music to her ears. Cartier’s smile was wide and she figured the suggestion to move in with him was perfect. In her mind, it seemed like a freebie. She would give him some pussy from time to time, and staying there would shorten her long commute. But Edward quickly set the record straight. She would pay half the bills in the place. Cartier’s wide smile had quickly faded. She’d griped about what she was and what she wasn’t used to, but Edward was adamant—take it or leave it.

  She was paying $1,400 a month for her larger one-bedroom apartment outside the city, and what she would save in public transportation each month could be added to her share with him. And all the hours she would save in commuting made sense.

  She took him up on his offer.

  Cartier had a plan, and Edward was a mere footnote. Though they were now roommates, she saw him as an Uncle Tom. She knew about his relationship with his coworker named Jill—his Becky. Edward and Jill were in a tricky situation. Jill’s father was a state senator and her mother was a doctor, and they were very wealthy folks. They also had a vision for their daughter, and that vision didn’t include her shacking up with a black man unless his name was Barack Obama—and not Barack Obama-ish. Edward regularly kept pressing his girlfriend to meet her parents, but she would always become evasive. Although Jill gave the best blowjobs, in bed she was as vanilla as they came. She would lie there in the missionary position, wanting Edward to do all the work and come quickly.

  However, Cartier had pussy that blew him away, and she was a freak in the bedroom. But that was it. Edward enjoyed the sex, but he was attracted to white women—blondes to be more precise. Cartier’s newly dyed blonde hair didn’t sway his heart. He felt she was uncouth, most times too ghetto, and too secretive. Yet, she had her share of the rent money each month and his rental savings allowed him to splurge on Jill.

  Cartier didn’t care about Edward and Jill’s silly dilemma. Her agenda was to save money and do her—and get her man back. Her fall from the throne was painful. She had lost everything and was now on the west coast trying to rebuild her life. It was a slow and gradual process. It was taking time to save money, but she was managing. As soon as she had $5,000 saved, she planned to leave the vampire city and head back east to reclaim her life. She wasn’t made to become someone’s lackey inside a small apartment, where he wanted her to cook, clean, pay half the rent, and give him sex.

  The man she was in love with would be home soon. Head had about four months left on his sentence, and she wanted to be back in New York when he got out and touched down in Brooklyn. She told herself, “Fuck the authorities, fuck my enemies. No more hiding.” Cartier was determined to be by her man’s side, no matter what.

  Dressed for work, she walked out of the apartment carrying her 10-speed bike and took the stairs to the first floor. Outside, she straddled the bike and traveled several blocks to her job. The Starbucks where she worked was one of the busier ones in the city. The entire morning and afternoon, Cartier stayed on her feet, back and forth behind the counter, serving people who were far different from her. They came from a different world than her—privileged and prejudiced, she felt—enjoying their smart looking coffees or espressos and flavorsome snacks while they busied themselves on their laptops or chitchatted about current events or some tech issue. The customers she served wouldn’t survive one night in Brooklyn. Shit, they probably wouldn’t be able to find Brooklyn on a map.

  Cartier had to serve them with a bright smile. This wasn’t her, a server to these people. Every day she felt fraudulent, but she was in hiding and had to start a new life. It felt like she was in the witness protection program, but she wasn’t a snitch.

  Her shift at Starbucks dragged like a snail on concrete, and it was tedious work, but she got through it. By late afternoon her shift ended and it was time for her to go home.

  Like routine, she straddled her 10-speed and rode off, stopping at Burger King to get a bite to eat and picking up her mail from her work friend. A letter from Head came, and she couldn’t wait to rip into it and read what her boo had to say. She’d been writing him for almost a year now, but with no reply. She had given him her coworker’s address, and now it looked like he had finally given in to her many pleas for forgiveness.

  As soon as Cartier got home, she stood in the kitchen and tore into the letter. Her hand slightly trembled as she opened the envelope. As she read his letter, she found herself stuck on stupid. His words threw her for a loop. The things he was saying were downright disrespectful and unpleasant. He called her all types of trifling, conniving, cum-guzzling bitches. Head stressed that she was not to be trusted and to stay the fuck away from him when he got paroled. The handwritten letter was three pages long and every word was bitch, cunt, whore, fuck you. She got the hint. But she was hurt. Was what she did to Head unconscionable? As far as she was concerned, that wa
s the past. She was young and immature back then and she wasn’t ready for the type of commitment he was looking for at the time. She agreed, previously, she had been a grimy bitch. But cum-guzzling? That was taking insults way too far.

  Cartier went into her bedroom with her bag of Burger King and penned her reply to him.

  My dearest Head:

  Look, nigga, I fucked up. But how many letters can I pen telling you the obvious? When you came to South Beach, to be honest, a bitch was feeling herself. I was with one of the top players in the drug game and I let that shit go to my head. I hurt you because I was hurting over the murder of my family. And hurt people hurt people and I took our love for granted. After what happened between us in South Beach, I can only apologize to you and hope that we can move on from the past. I never loved Hector. I thought I did until he was murdered and I felt nothing cuz you had my heart. You’ve always had it. You know we were made for each other, so stop acting hard to get back. And if you want me to guzzle your cum e’ry day, I will. If you want me to beg you to come back to me, I will. You will always be my baby. No other bitch can have you, so get that out your stubborn mind. If I see you with a bitch, I’m fuckin’ her up. If I hear a new bitch’s name, I’m fuckin’ her up. So please don’t get a new bitch fucked up, cuz you know I will fuck a bitch up. You don’t have to write me back, but just know that when you come home, I’ll be tapping on ya shoulder. Act like you know!

  Love you, my nigga.

  Your bae,

  Cartier xoxoxo

  Right after she sealed her letter with a kiss, she received a text message from Edward.

  Working late. Don’t wait up.

  She rolled her eyes and sighed, tossing her phone on the bed. “Nigga, do I ever?”

  4

  Apple was back in New York City—back in the trendy neighborhood of SoHo in the late evening with the sun gradually setting behind the horizon. The trip from Westchester had taken her a little over an hour. She climbed out of the car and stood in front of the attractive brownstone in lower Manhattan. She was renting a two-bedroom duplex apartment, and it was costly, but for Apple, it was well worth it. There was no way she was going to move to the Midwest or the west coast like Cartier had—and hide. This city was her home and no one was going to force her out of it.